Saturday was a day trip to Aix-en-Provence for the markets. We found Aix a much more palatable city than the others in Provence we had experienced so far. It seemed cleaner, not smelly and only one beggar to be seen. The girls enjoyed the so called flea market, mostly clothes though. The boys and I reverted to people watching. Actually I people watched, they did their usual feral kid routines. Pretending to beg, ghosting people, climbing and jumping over everything etc.
Aix has a bit of split personality. Half of the town centre is medieval with twisting lanes and the other is laid out in a modern grip pattern with 18th & 19th century buildings. They are separated by a grand boulevard supposedly reminiscent of the Champs Elysees in Paris.
We had fun with fountains in Aix, one is supposed to come from a hot spring but wasn't warm so we checked them all even though most are the middle of roundabouts.
After Aix we headed south to the coast. A small port called Cassis, very picturesque with boats in the harbour, towering cliffs covered in sea mist and a beach by the turquoise Mediterranean Sea. We have been getting lucky with parking lately, on Friday a German couple gave us their ticket and parking spot at Les Baux and the ticket machine was broken at Cassis after we fluked a spot in the very busy parking lot in the centre of town.
Ollie and I swam, and then hung on the beach with Sam while the girls shopped. Luckily the day had warmed a little as it had started quite cool. The beach at Cassis is fed by an underground spring so the water is quite chilly.
Tan and Tim had a misunderstanding on the trip down so we had been on toll roads. We decided to avoid them on the way home which ended up meaning we went via the edge of Marseilles. This is one town I never want to visit again. Very unattractive, crowded with high rise apartment blocks. Apparently it is a bit of a dumping ground for France's immigrants and has many ghettos of differing ethnic populations. The traffic was horrendous so we picked up some pizzas on the way home for a late dinner.
Sunday became a chillout day. The boys surprised me with croissants from the boulangerie (not in bed though too many crumbs). Some lovely presents had been covertly gathered and Dad had a very pleasant morning reading in bed. We've been making good use of the holiday reading libraries in our various accommodation, adding to them with what we've finished and finding new books to enjoy.
We've had some great reads along the way, I particularly found 'Oranges & Sunshine' which was in the apartment at Salou, a very moving account of the child migrants from England to Australia. We brought a few books with us, 'Major Pettigrew's Last Stand' was a good one too. And found a few others that were relevant in our travels such as Peter Mayle's 'A Year in Provence', and 'A Year in the Merde' by another ex-pat author about living in Paris.
Lunch on Sunday was Bamboo Thai near Lourmarin. We've been craving Thai for so long and it seemed a good excuse. The Thai we had in Paris hadn't really been the same. This one was excellent, our cravings for Panang Curry and Pad Thai were satisfied.
We finished the day with a drive to the nearby village of Lacoste. Home of the Marquis de Sade's chateau, apparently now owned and being restored by Pierre Cardin. We had a brief but steep walk through the village to the chateau at the top only to find there was a road we could have driven up. Sam and I had a bushwalk back to the village and then tried to find the road back to the top to pick up the others in the car.
Today we again stuck to the Luberon Valley and did a local village crawl to see some of the places we had missed. First stop was Cavallion for a market (there's one everyday somewhere), similar to Aix but some good linen stalls for Tan.
Next was L'Isle-sur-Sorgue for lunch and a wander. This is a very pretty little town with many shallow little streams of the Sorgue River running through. They once powered various mills in the town. Now it's main industry appears to be antiques as the town is full of antique stores and lovely decorating shops. Even I enjoyed some of these, there were some beautiful old pieces and lots of interesting new furniture and furnishings as well.
We finished the day at Gordes. Another rustic ancient hilltop village. Again full of tourist shops (and tourists) but still charming and scenic. Tan and I also managed to try one more of the restaurants in our village tonight. The food was fantastic again, the waiter caught us translating the menu outside and went through explaining each item. We still weren’t quite sure exactly what we were ordering but had a basic idea of the main ingredient in each dish we ordered. It was a bit of a surprise when each course then came out. They were all delicious and we thoroughly enjoyed everything but probably wouldn't have ordered it from an English menu (best not to know sometimes). Again it was a limited menu, a choice of only three entrees, mains and desserts. This time two fish and one pork. Seems to be the secret to having good food though, do a few dishes well.
Packing tonight and getting ready to say a sad (for Tan & I anyway) farewell to Provence and France. The charming Luberon Valley has grown on both of us.
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| Provence Day 5-6 |
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